A video conferencing system may be used to provide communication among conference participants who are distributed among multiple meeting sites. Each meeting site in a video conferencing system may be equipped with video/audio sensing devices and video/audio rendering devices. The video/audio sensing devices may be used to hold communication sessions and to obtain a video/audio recording of a meeting. An obtained video/audio recording may be transferred to a remote meeting site and rendered on the video/audio rendering devices in the remote meeting site.
It may be common for conference participants to split off into side groups for private or focused discussions. Unfortunately, prior video conferencing systems may not facilitate side group communication among participants at different conference sites. For example, the interconnections of the sensing and rendering devices in prior video conferencing systems may permit only one discussion group at a time.
In addition, prior video conferencing system may not enable conference participants located at different meeting sites to collaborate on document creation. A prior video conferencing system may be augmented with a computer-based document sharing system. Unfortunately, document sharing systems may not integrate well into a video conferencing system.